The Edge of the Ocean
by CheyRose
Summary: Very AU. Logan Echolls is one of the best hitmen for hire in California. When a personal case turns over a startling new leaf in his life, he's forced to use his skills to protect those he loves, despite the betrayel he feels.


Edge of the Ocean

The Start

AN- So this is an idea that originated with my dearest friend/BETA/Goddess who introduced me to all things VM, Monti, or maybe not but, she was the one to first bring the possibility of Logan becoming a mobster to my attention and I have yet to see anything else out there (not to say there isn't, I just haven't read it). So, this wasn't a completely original thought.

My OC Tesla Spencer returns here, but she's different in this story. She's younger in parts, and she's Shawn's stepsister, and Dick's half sister. She's also going to be Logan's main love interest, with some Logan/Lilly and Logan/Veronica mentioned. Please don't let that be a reason for you to walk away from this point, I promise to at least try to keep you interested even without LoVe.

* * *

[Present Day, San Diego California.]

"Hello, Mr. Echolls. Welcome to San Diego!"

The fat little camera man was loud, and he walked calmly alongside Logan at a similar pace, generally out of the way, but getting his shot. Logan smiled tightly toward his lens, sunglasses hiding his expression partially. As an adult he made less of a stink about the paparazzi in general, compared to when he'd been young. Whatever, they were doing their jobs, and Logan was ambivalent to them. They didn't matter anymore, little did.

"Thanks," he responded gruffly, the camera's audio barely picking him up.

"Mr. Echolls, are you going to be at any of the memorial events for Tesla Spencer this weekend?"

That didn't get under Logan's skin like it had on the first anniversary of Tess' death. He had gone after a photog. _"What, it's not bad enough I have to mourn her, now you motherfuckers have to get in my way?"_

Logan shook his head, with his work most public events with old friends was virtually impossible. "No, I'll be thinking about it all privately. If you'll excuse me."

"Thanks Mr. Echolls, for talking to me. We really loved your mom."

At that Logan stilled, a thought that he generally blocked away now, but the reminder brought back the smiles that Lynn would flash for the paparazzi, and he smiled softly at the camera. "She loved you guys. Have a nice day."

Slipping into the parked limo, Logan plopped back against the seat with a huff and he glanced out the tinted window after the guy, who was walking back for his car. Un-doing his tie, he glanced at the man who had been waiting in the car, rubbed the skin above his lip. "Well I hope this will be quick. I have a date with the barber."

Ross Hardy didn't look up at him, just kept reading his paper to himself. After a moment he spoke to the younger man. "You've got to be the most well known killer for hire. How the hell do you avoid the cameras when you need to?"

"We seem to have a mutual flow, they only come around when it's cool," Logan mused, shifting in the seat a little bit. Hardy's butler offered him a glass of brandy and he accepted, knocking it back in one gulp. "Some days and weeks are better than others, I tend to know when to show my face and when to hide it."

"This is a bad week for you," Hardy said smoothly, one eye popping up. "You've never told me about her."

Logan smoothed his hand across the tie, noticed the front page of the paper his boss was reading. 'REMEMBERING TESLA SPENCER, THREE YEARS LATER.' He cleared his throat. "I went to high school with her, online, this online school system and we got to be friends, after my girlfriend at the time died we just. . Got serious one day." He was quiet a moment, smiled up at him sadly. "We planned to get married right after college and. . .I got into it with the Sorokins. Then she ends up missing, and we look for her for two months when her bones are found charred up in Hearst's furnace."

Hardy looked back down at the paper, shaking his head. "Sickening."

"Yeah, it was."

"Well, you'd have made her proud." He dug in his coat and pulled out an envelope, filled with cash, handed it to Logan. "Great job on the Malkeys. You're the only kid I know who really knows what 'make it an accident' means."

"I was raised to never do a half-ass job," Logan commented cooly, slipping the money into his own jacket, watching the beach pass them by as they drove down the interstate. He settled back in the seat more, the alcohol making his veins warm, and he closed his eyes. Remembered red hair and soft skin, and the glimmer of the promise ring on her finger in the sunlight every morning.

* * *

[The rundown.]

Tesla Spencer was 19 years old when she went missing from her hotel room at the Neptune Grand in Neptune California. She was a college sophomore, and she was living with on and off boyfriend Logan Echolls. While born to and raised by Henry and Madeleine Spencer, it was revealed when she was a teenager that biologically she was Richard Casablancas' biological daughter.

To keep the news of his illegitimate spawn out of the tabloids, Richard paid for both her and her half brother, Shawn, to attend high school through a national cyber-school district, designed and operated by none other than Kane Software. That's where she met Lilly Kane and all of her friends on the site's California schools boards.

The teens often met up and, as a result, became good friends. Tess became even better friends with another 09er, Myrene, who was close to a little bit of everyone, including Logan and Lilly, as well as Dick and Duncan, and thus, for a while, Veronica Mars. That helped greatly in the making of friends all around.

When Lilly died, and Logan became the unspoken "leader" of the popular kids on the boards, Veronica was shunned, and everyone tried to find a little peace and normalcy, continuing on into their senior year of education. Never terribly close before, Tess found herself chatting with Logan more and more. Such became flirting and meeting up, and ended in them finishing out their final year of high school dating. The Thanksgiving before graduation, Logan presented her with a 14 karat white-gold promise ring, featuring about eight small diamonds (equaling just under a carat) in the shape of a heart.

However, they broke up the summer before their freshman year at Hearst and Logan dated Veronica for a while. Which lead to him running in with Gorey Sorokin once they had broken up, and the Russian pompous had uploaded the video of Veronica and her new boyfriend fooling around. In the meantime, Tess had become engaged to an old Syncratic enemy of Logan's. Bronson Akkers, a football playing dick who always made a point of provoking Logan. The night before their intended wedding the following summer, Tess' girlfriends threw her a bachelorette party in a local bar. Logan wandered in and saw her, and upon hearing what was going to happen, followed her into the ladies room at one point. Didn't take a single word to get her up on the counter, where he consummated a reunion between them, sending her back to Bronson with his ring, and then back into his arms for good.

He'd hoped.

One morning during Christmas break, Logan came back to the suite to find she was gone. All of her stuff still there. Come January after weeks of searching the area with the feds and sheriff's department and volunteers, cadaver dogs lead them to the Hearst college basement, where remains were discovered in the furnace. Ones Logan identified by the partially melted promise ring on the finger.

After that, Logan had left town. Drifted off to live a surfer's life before he had stumbled upon Hardy. And a mentor, Marty, who taught him to use a gun and kick ass at it. It was hardly his ideal life, the press still bugged him and anniversaries, like this and of Lilly's death and his mother's suicide, In the end, he found, all he needed was the money, good liquor and redheads willing to whore themselves to him and let him believe, for a few seconds, that she's still there.

* * *

"Logan?"

He jerked awake to look up at Hardy, who was bent into the limo, looking at him. "We're here."

"Oh, sorry." He stood and slipped out, rubbing his eyes. "Thanks," He said as the butler handed him his bag. Life with Hardy as a boss wasn't perfect, but it was giving him a good chance with good resources to go after Gorey once and for all. He'd always been convinced the dickwad had something to do with Tess' disappearance and death. Maybe if he could cross that pond and burn the bridge, maybe then he could get just a little bit of peace.

They were closing in on Gorey's best friend right then. Living in San Francisco, under some bogus alias. He owned some "high class" strip club up by the Bay, and Logan intended on infiltrating and then tossing the son of a bitch into it. Hoped that would be enough to lure Gorey out of hiding so he could finish him once and for all.

Hoped that would be what it would take to avenge Tess, and her bright blue eyes and her playful smile, the way her hair fell in her face. What Gorey had taken from him was far more precious than just a lover. Tess had been the only person he could see himself committing to since Lilly. The only person, even aside from Lilly, that he had considered happily starting a family with. Well, maybe not happily, but he had assumed that sort of thing would work itself out, since it was Tess. A year after her death he'd gone in for a vasectomy, effectively preventing any illegitimate heirs to the Echolls fortune, and their gold-digging mama's.

He hurried up to his apartment as Hardy drove off, pausing to look around at the grounds, covered in well kept gardens that he could imagine Tess getting dirty in just to plant a dumb little rosebush. He smiled to himself before he let himself into the building to secure his flight up to San Francisco the next day.

* * *

[Flashback, news montage.]

"_Tonight, the Neptune Sheriff's department is seeking the whereabouts of a college student. Tesla Spencer, who made international headlines two years ago when she testified in the Lilly Kane murder trial against Aaron Echolls, disappeared from her hotel room some time Sunday night…"_

"_Spencer is a Sophomore at Hearst college in Neptune…"_

"_Where she lives with boyfriend, Logan Echolls…"_

"_Retired Santa Barbara detective Henry Spencer, the young girl's father, had this to say in a press conference held just two hours ago…"_

"_Tesla is only nineteen years old, she's a straight A student, she's a cheerleader, and she's my daughter and a sister, and she was so young and in love and full of life. . .I'm offering a $25,000 reward for her safe return, and if you have her and you're watching this tonight, please. I'll pay anything. I have access to any amount that you want. . .you just can't hurt her. Tess has so much still, to live for…"_

_"If he sees her as a person and not an object, it will be harder to tear her up." _

"_Hey Sheriff, what. . .did you find her?"_

"_They have someone down in the morgue. . .can you look at this picture and tell me if you recognize anything?"_

"_That was our ring. I promised to take care of her, I. . ."_

"_Logan you know none of this is your fault."_

""_You're gonna die…"_

"_Yeah. Someday…."_

_

* * *

_

Logan jerked awake for the second time in a 24 hour period and he rubbed at his face, his body covered in a cold sweat. "Holy fucking shit." He grunted, wiped his face in the pillow. Climbing up from the bed, he stumbled into the bathroom and washed his face with cold water. Looked at himself in the mirror before shaking his head.

His chest was bare, having been asleep in his boxers and he was faced with a tattoo on his child. A plain little bolt of lightning bisecting an elegant, beautiful lily. When he'd gotten it, the idea had been simple, a change. To become someone tougher than the little bitch constantly bursting into tears when someone said her name, when the cameras wanted to film him and is honest reaction to losing her. Now, all these years later, it was an annoyance.

He walked back into his bedroom as the landline started to ring and he plopped down on the bed, picked up the phone. "Hello?"

Nothing.

"Hello?"

Silence.

He sighed. "Motherfucker, you've been calling for two years, and I swear, when my plate is less full? I'm gonna come put a . . ."

The dial tone, Logan looked down at the phone and sighed. "Bullet in your head." He shook his head before he hung the phone back up on the cradle, turned out the light, and went back to sleep.


End file.
